Ex-~S1ave Stories
District ~5
~ Vanderburgh County
Lauana Creel	The Life Story of George Taylor Burne.

(~L~~r\*e ~~-VA~äA4))
	Ox~‘-oarts and flat boats, and pioneer surroundings; crowds of men and

w~men crowding to the rails of river steainboat8; gay ladies in holiday attire and gentleman in tall hats, low out veste and silk mufflers; for the excursion boats carried the gentry of every area.

	A little negro boy clung to the ragged skirts of a slave mother,both were engrossed in watching the great wheels that ploughed the ~issi~sippi river into roaming billows. Many boats stopped at Gregeryts Landing, Missouri to

stow away wood, for niany engines were fired with wood in the early d~ys.
I

The	Burnts brothers operated a wood yard at the Landing and the work of h~44m~

cutting, ~e~~and piling wood for the conunerce ‘was performed by slaves of the Burns plantation.

	George Taylor Burns was five years of age and helped his mother all day as she toiled in the wood yards. “The colder the weather,the more hard work we had to do.“ declares Uncle George.

	George Taylor Burns, the child of Missouri slave parents, recalls the scenes enacted at the Burns.‘ wood yards so long ago. lie is a resident of Evansville, Indiana and his snow white ha±r and beard bearfi‘ testimony that his days have been already long upon the earth.

	Uncle George remembers the ti~ne when his infant hands reached in vain for hi s mother, the kind and gentle Lucy Burns : Remembe rs a long cold winter of snow and ice when boats were tied up to their moorings. Old master died that winter and. many slave s we re sold by the he irs ‚ among them was Lucy Burns • Little George clung to his mother but stronghands tore away his clasp. ‚ Then he watched her cross a distant hill, chained to a long line of departing slaves. George never saw. his parents again and although the memory of his mother is vivid he scarcely re~exnbers his father‘s face. Es said, ‘~Father was black but my mother ~was a bright mulatto.“ . S